Ben Stein is an idiot

[no_leaf_clover]

Good luck getting a conventional scientific theory for those.

I don't particularly want one. Just like you wouldn't use a hammer to open an egg.  I just don't think the metaphorical hammer is the end-all to all of life's "problems," yet it seems to be cynically elevated to such a position.

I "respect" science, I read scientific magazines and the like, I find it interesting.  But the scientist will never replace a wiser man for me.  I've been around tons of scientists and engineers and the lot usually is a close-minded and extremely right-brained bunch.  In other words, not your Newtons, Einsteins, Teslas, etc., all very religious in their own ways.



Adun, I have already posted everything I wanted to say to you.  I could sit here and type lengthy responses to all your questions but I think it would be a waste of time for both of us.  You can Google words I posted and take things further if you ever so desire.

I'll offer this excerpt from the Wikipedia page on "science," though:

Historian Jacques Barzun termed science "a faith as fanatical as any in history" and warned against the use of scientific thought to suppress considerations of meaning as integral to human existence.

That is basically the same thing as I was just saying to you.  Knowing the way an electron moves, for example, is meaningless as far as being able to truly understand what that electron is.  Do you feel as though you can be summed up as a person just by showing all the places you move around to in your life, and the things you say, etc.?  If so then I feel even more sorry for you.

Economist E. F. Schumacher considered that the 17th century scientific revolution shifted science from a focus on understanding nature, or wisdom, to a focus on manipulating nature, i.e. power, and that science's emphasis on manipulating nature leads it inevitably to manipulate people, as well.[22] Science's focus on quantitative measures has led to critiques that it is unable to recognize important qualitative aspects of the world.[22]

The implications of the ideological denial of ethics for the practice of science itself in terms of fraud, plagiarism, and data falsification, has been criticized by several academics. In "Science and Ethics", the philosopher Bernard Rollin examines the ideology that denies the relevance of ethics to science, and argues in favor of making education in ethics part and parcel of scientific training.[23]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Philosophical_focus (emphasis mine)

[Adun]

Somehow you keep trying to shift the topic to consciousness and qualia and implying I am using science to "suppress considerations of meaning as integral to human existence". The topic was the intellectually lazy patch that is creationism/ID.

It would seem that in your perspective one can only follow either hardcore materialism or silly mystical crap.

[no_leaf_clover]

Somehow you keep trying to shift the topic to consciousness

How could I not?

and qualia and implying I am using science to "suppress considerations of meaning as integral to human existence". The topic was the intellectually lazy patch that is creationism/ID.

And I have eaten that topic!

It would seem that in your perspective one can only follow either hardcore materialism or silly mystical crap.

If it seems so to you then you are wrong.

I already told you I am an engineering major. Do you want me to draw you some free body diagrams?  Will they tickle your fancy?

[Adun]

Sorry, I fail to see how denying a magic man designing reality as we know it implies a materialistic explanation for consciousness. 

[no_leaf_clover]

Well I can tell you all the most interesting things in electricity and electronics occur when you create open feedback loops, kind of like when you put the output into the input and vice versa.  Your head is an open feedback.  Consciousness is an open feedback.  And it never stops, always seeking upward, like plant growth, and it destroys what limits it, transcends it, and it will ultimately envelope all.

It is why thermodynamics and entropy state that everything should be breaking down into nothingness (energy as we know it is always lost in transfer! between friction, heat, chemical reactions, etc. etc.),  but instead the universe keeps building up and organizing into sentient beings and swirling galaxies!

You are a PART of god, and it is OBVIOUS.  I can't help but to keep referring to consciousness, because of what value or meaning is anything if nothing is there to be conscious of it, or to perceive it?

[Adun]

If you want to say "god" is the universe then that's a whole different story, pantheism makes much more sense than personal gods.

[no_leaf_clover]

Yes and if we really want to dive down the rabbit hole then the real "god" has no form or name, or infinitely many forms and names, always changing, burning like fire, and you could say it doesn't even really exist.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html

[CFTraveler]

free body diagrams?

What's a free body diagram?

[interception]

Well I can tell you all the most interesting things in electricity and electronics occur when you create open feedback loops, kind of like when you put the output into the input and vice versa.  Your head is an open feedback.  Consciousness is an open feedback.  And it never stops, always seeking upward, like plant growth, and it destroys what limits it, transcends it, and it will ultimately envelope all.

It is why thermodynamics and entropy state that everything should be breaking down into nothingness (energy as we know it is always lost in transfer! between friction, heat, chemical reactions, etc. etc.),  but instead the universe keeps building up and organizing into sentient beings and swirling galaxies!

You are a PART of god, and it is OBVIOUS.  I can't help but to keep referring to consciousness, because of what value or meaning is anything if nothing is there to be conscious of it, or to perceive it?

I agree, except for one thing: consciousness has allready enveloped all. Or rather, everything was/is consciousness.

[no_leaf_clover]

What's a free body diagram?

It's like a sketch scientists and engineers use to analyze isolated physical systems.  Like if you have two columns and you set a beam across them,  and then sit something else on the far end of the beam,  one would commonly draw a free-body diagram of these things and use it to apply the right formulas to see what forces are acting where, moments of inertia, etc., to make sure the structure is sturdy, for example.  You can draw them for all sorts of things to do calculations in old Newtonian mechanics.

This link gives a definition and has an illustration: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/freeb.html

Here's one drawn for a pulley with two weights attached:



And here's the site it came from (an example problem) : http://www.mece.ualberta.ca/Courses/enph131/fbdex1.html

You could use that drawing to help calculate what would happen when the 2 kg mass is released from rest and accelerated downward by gravity, assuming that surface and pulley are frictionless and not more "sticky" (in which case they'd have a coefficient of friction to add into the calculations).

[CFTraveler]

Thanks nlc.
It's good to learn something every day.